City offices were closed Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday. So our report has nothing to show for today. We’ll continue highlighting our continuing urban destruction here tomorrow.
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STOPPING FOR MLK DAY 
In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Swamplot is putting the brakes on new posts for the rest of this Monday. We’ll be back tomorrow with continued coverage of what’s new in Houston’s evolving assortment of human habitats. Photo of Crestmont Park United Methodist Church at 11333 MLK Blvd.: Swamplot inbox
- Hilton Americas To Undergo $37M Update [HBJ ($)]
- Boutique Heights Hotel Planned on 20th St. Wins City Approval To Move Forward [HBJ ($)]
- David’s Bridal Emerges from Chapter 11 Restructuring Without Closing Any Stores [Houston Chronicle]
- Group Behind Coltivare Leases Neighboring Blue Line Bike Lab Space [Culturemap]
Photo of Heights Central Station: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Goodbye, Meyergrove Apartments — and other Houston farewells.
- 10 Misty Pt. [HAR]
THE HERITAGE SOCIETY IS RUNNING OUT OF MONEY TO MAINTAIN THE COLLECTION OF OLD HOUSES IN SAM HOUSTON PARK 
Although the 10 old buildings in Sam Houston Park are owned by the city, it’s the nonprofit Heritage Society that keeps them all standing at an average cost of $300,000 to $350,000 a year, reports the Chronicle‘s Molly Glentzer. But, she writes, “Even before Hurricane Harvey inundated the park and flooded the 1868 Pillot House,” the Society was borrowing heavily to finance building upkeep,” and its financial outlook is now pretty dire. Starting next month, all 15 of its full-time employees will downshift to part-time status. “General park hours will remain the same, open dawn-to-dusk daily,” writes Glentzer, “but the organization will need to lean more than ever on its volunteers.” The Heritage Society does receive some money from the city, but the mayor’s chief development officer Andy Icken tells Glentzer that “the city hasn’t agreed to provide more funding, and there is no proposal right now to do so.” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo of the Pillot House, Sam Houston Park, downtown Houston: i_am_jim [license]
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This 4-story glass and stucco box dubbed Miabella got pulled from the agenda before Houston’s city planning commission could take a look at it yesterday, but renderings of it are still floating around the interwebs. It’s planned to go up on 3 currently vacant home lots at the corner of Fox St. and N. Nagle St., putting it 3 blocks north of Navigation Blvd. in the Second Ward. The straight-shot rending above shows where its grade-level garage will let out onto N. Nagle.
Its Fox-St.-side will also provide access to parking:
Second Ward
- Disney Cruise Line To Double Galveston Departures Following New Agreement the Port [Houston Chronicle]
- Owners of Chimichurri’s Buy Neighboring Kingwood Restaurant Sharky’s Waterfront Grill and Plan To Reopen It [Houston Chronicle]
- Affordable Housing HQ Breaks Ground Across Emancipation Ave. from Emancipation Park [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Dish Society Opens in Heights Central Station at 11th St. and Yale [Culturemap]
- MD Anderson Cancer Center To Open New Woodlands Clinic Under Construction at College Park and Fellowship Dr. by September [Community Impact]
- Handful of Hwy. 290 Lane Closures Planned This Weekend From 610 Out to Grand Pkwy. [Community Impact]
Photo of mural at Wash Ave and Braeshear St.: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Goodbye to the old and the beautiful:
- 222 Greenbriar Dr. [HAR]
Jim McIngvale, more widely known as Mattress Mack, told radio host Michael Berry this morning on KTRH that Gallery Furniture’s 30,000-sq.-ft. store at 2411 Post Oak Blvd., shown above, will close following the end of its lease in a year. “The traffic went down by half because they tore up the road,” said Mack, referring to the construction on the new Uptown BRT that now has the street peppered with blaze orange cones and barricades. Gallery Furniture opened the Uptown location in 2009 inside what used to be a Pier One at the Post Oak Shopping Center. The closure will bring the chain down to 2 branches: the one in Richmond off the Grand Pkwy. and its original spot on I-45.
- January 17, 2019 [The Michael Berry Show]
Photo: Isiah Carey
Mattress Pad Available
TAKEOUT BEER SALES AT BREWERIES COULD BECOME LEGAL UNDER NEWLY PROPOSED STATE LAW 
A pair of bills filed recently in Austin aim to let craft breweries across Teas sell beer at their facilities for “off-premises consumption,” reports Houston Public Media’s Katie Watkins. It’s not so unprecedented: According to the Texas Craft Brewers Guild, “Texas is currently the only state where customers can’t purchase a growler or six-pack to-go” at local breweries. (And on top of that, take-out sales of wine and spirits are already legal in Texas at wineries and distilleries.) If passed, the bills, S.B. 312 and H.B. 672 would apply only to breweries making less than 225,000 barrels a year and would set a limit on the amount of take-out product permitted for sale over that time span. Representative Eddie Rodriguez, the House democrat who filed the bill, put it this way to Watkins: “It’s 2019 and people are used to being able to get the things they want.” [Houston Public Media] Photo of Saint Arnold brewery: Marc Longoria
- Decades-Old Rice Silos Crumble in East Pearland To Make Way for New Industrial and Commercial Business Park [Community Impact]
- Exxon Starts Shutting Down Baytown Refinery So That It Can Conduct Major Planned Maintenance Overhaul [Houston Chronicle]
- Downtown’s Houston Center Will Undergo Complex-Wide Renovation [Houston Chronicle]
- Waiting on Dozens of New Garbage Trucks, City Will Use Rental Trucks in the Meantime [Houston Public Media]
- Texas Legislators Consider Slapping More Restrictions on Sand Mining in Order To Curb Flooding It May Cause [Houston Public Media]
- 2019 Houston Open Scheduled for Oct. 7 to 13 at Humble’s Golf Club of Houston [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Houston Central Library, Jesse H. Jones Building: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlnes
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
The buildings will be gone, but their organizing principles persist.
